LoL: EarthBound Named Tofugu’s Best Japanese Learning Book of 2017

Well, this was a nice weekend surprise! Legends of Localization Book 2: EarthBound was chosen by Tofugu as the Best Japanese Learning Book of 2017 :O That’s really weird because we never meant to teach anyone Japanese with this book, haha. But Tofugu’s reason makes a lot of sense:

As we talked it out on the podcast, we realized that everything in this side-by-side analysis of the Japanese game Mother 2 and its English iteration, Earthbound, just had too much information on language, translation decisions, Japanese history and culture, as well as fantastic design. We couldn’t help it… it just wins. There’s something incredibly powerful about being able to see and understand the translation decisions that went into an entire game. And the game is focused more on conversations and puns than fighting, so it will really help your Japanese skills shoot into the stratosphere.

It’s a honor, thank you Tofugu! They wrote a big article on other Japanese learning resources like shows, websites, games, and more. Read the whole thing here!

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A lot is always going on behind the scenes of our Legends of Localization projects. Here, we’ll share some inside looks at what we’re up to and share cool photos + info of our research materials, most of which never gets seen in our main articles & books!